


Midnight Gardening

by KalicoFox



Series: The Adventure Zone Oneshots [9]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, This is how you cleric for Pan, midnight gardening, trying to get a handle on Merle's character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 13:49:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11807229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalicoFox/pseuds/KalicoFox
Summary: After everything, Merle needs a little time to think. What better way to do that then to get a little bit of gardening in?





	Midnight Gardening

When everything was over and done; the Hunger defeated, and the bodies cleaned up, no one knew what to do.

It was awkward, looking at each other and seeing the new-old faces, familiar-but-not in the ways they’d aged (or hadn’t) and they didn’t know how to handle it without the looming end of the world forcing them to put it all aside.

“Well I don’t know about you guys,” Magnus said, yawning abruptly, “but I’m going to bed. See you in the morning!”  
And off he went.

After that, it was like some sort of switch had been flipped, and everyone scattered.

Merle was almost positive that none of them were actually going to bed, but, well, he wasn’t going to call them on it. Not tonight.

It’d been a long,  _long_  day, and they could all use a little time to just kick back and relax and try to get their heads back on straight.

Which is, of course, why he was heading up to the quad, rather than to bed.

When he got up to the quad, Merle paused, taking in the view with a sense of quiet satisfaction. The sky was clear of any hint of unnatural darkness. The moon was full, the stars were bright, and the quad was an absolute wreck, gaping craters and pockmarks marring the previously smooth lawn.

It was perfect.

Most clerics worshipped their gods in temples, with prayers and sacrifices, and whatever else their god demanded.

Pan didn’t want any of that shit. Not really. Sure, it was good for an ego boost, and if that was where you felt he was leading you, then go for it, but Merle had always been a hands on kind of guy, and that was how he showed his devotion to his god.

Steady toil and quiet devotion that was best expressed through stuff like bonsai or topiary. Or restoring a destroyed quad in the dark of night.

“Whaddaya think?” He murmured under his breath, surveying the wreckage the Hunger had made of the grass and trees. “Good enough?”

A lone building, still standing, albeit barely, caught his eye, and he frowned, trying to remember if he’d seen it before.

It was small, barely more than a shed, and half its roof was missing, but it was as good a place as any to start, and so Merle made his way over, picking his way past wreckage and rubble and over ditches carved through the soil.

It was, he found, a gardener’s shed. Fully stocked with tools and fertilizer and seeds that would grow plants that Merle was positive he’d never seen growing around the base before; the sight of them made him grin, his eye lighting up behind his glasses as he started piling everything he might need into a wheelbarrow.

“Guess that’s a yeah.” He chuckled, and got to work.


End file.
